The Browning Version
by O'Donnell
Summary: Watson shoots a gun - and so does Sherlock. This is the how the when and the why about Sherlock's very special skill.


The Browning Version

Sherlock Holmes uses a gun - and so does John Watson. Well, they would, wouldn't they? This is the how and the when and the why.

The Browning Version

The boy stood in the middle of the kitchen, right arm extended horizontally, a bag of sugar balanced on the palm. The man by the door checking the stopwatch registered the arm tremble, the boy bite his lip, concentrate hard, manage another five seconds before the arm quavered down and the boy caught the bag before it hit the ground.

"Fifty six seconds," said the man neutrally.

"Oh!" a small sound of frustration.

"Try the left."

The boy swapped hands, held out the bag of sugar again with the other hand. Shortly afterwards, the same thing happened.

"Thirty nine."

The same frustrated sound, sharper this time.

"We'll try again in a month," said the man calmly. "We can't do anything more until you can do this thing. One minute. You know that."

"Two weeks," negotiated the boy.

The man sighed, shook his head. "You are only nine. Still very young to want to do this. Why do you want to do this?"

"So I can. Useful. Fun. Mind over matter. Challenge." he looked up suddenly and met the eyes of George Bradshaw. "And because Mycroft can."

The security agent caught a breath. To be able to see into those strange pale eyes was rare; the boy always seemed to have his head down, or turned away; avoiding the world. But suddenly to have those eyes boring into your soul as if they could see inside it was even rarer. George always found it unsettling. But he was sympathetic with the younger child wanting to be on par with his brilliant and untouchable older brother.

"Two weeks, then." Bradshaw promised and turned away.

But it was only thirteen days later when William Sherlock Scott Holmes cornered him in the estate office.

"I'm ready," said the boy. George nodded.

So they went back to the kitchen, claimed a new bag of sugar from the housekeeper and repeated the exercise.

The right arm held steady for sixty eight seconds, the left arm fifty three.

"So….." murmured George Bradshaw. Which was all the congratulation the boy was going to get. "You must have worked hard to get to this."

"Yes," said the boy. No smile of triumph, no glow of achievement. Just a calm recognition of a target met and recognised as such by authority.

"If you are going to do this, you are going to do it properly. You have now passed the standard one minute control test with your dominant arm, but work on the left also; I want to teach you to be ambidextrous in this. It will pay dividends in the long run and may save your life."

"Yes," A brief, businesslike nod.

"This is no game, Sherlock. Start playing at this, not taking it seriously, and it stops immediately."

"Yes, sir."

He didn't know why he was issuing the boy with the standard warning. The lad never played for playing's sake; was always serious, always learning, always concentrated. It was uncanny, and scared the man sometimes. He had never known a child like this one.

"I will tell the gamekeeper he can now teach you to shoot. Basic gun handling, respect for firearms, gun etiquette solo and in company. Yes? And when you have mastered that and can take down a line of clays, then a brace of pheasants in a formal shoot, a couple of rabbits on a rough shoot, only then will we start pistol training. Yes?"

"Yes." He looked up at the boy, who was keeping his face impassive, but was now quivering with realisation of the enormity of his achievement. And what it meant. "Thank you, sir."

"Don't thank me. This is up to you, Sherlock. How you respond, how you learn. How much you want to learn. No half measures, no concessions. Guns are dangerous. You must always be serious around them."

"I know."

They smiled tentatively at each other then.

"OK, Sherlock. We'll run with this. One big question, though." George Bradshaw smiled openly now, but kept his voice neutral. "Which of us is going to tell Mycroft?"

o0o0o0o

It was all a matter of focus and control. And he was good at that.

And so it began. If the gamekeeper of the Holmes's country estate felt that the boy was an able and willing pupil, then Bradshaw did too. Bradshaw had the vague feeling that the boy might have ambitions to go into the forces and become a hero. That would at least suit his already unusual personality.

So after he learnt the basics from the estate gamekeeper, Bradshaw then spared the child two of his lunch hours a week; Sherlock shooting, listening, learning at a makeshift range beyond Home Farm while Bradshaw munched his sandwiches and emptied a flask of home made soup.

He knew better than to offer any to Sherlock - who seemed to live on fresh air, drinking little and eating less - as the boy, white faced with concentration, learnt his skills. And other, more deadly, more defensive gun skills.

You seldom need a pistol, he learnt. But when you do, you need it mighty badly. One hundred rounds do not constitute fire power. One hit constitutes fire power. The three most important points of shooting are bullet placement, bullet placement, and bullet placement. Sherlock watched and practised and learnt.

Shooting with both hands and either. Direct from, drawn from, various holstered or hidden positions on the body. Shooting prone on the ground, then rolling and firing simultaneously. To learn to handle a gun as if in battle, in hand to hand combat, at close quarters; and to learn to use a wide range of rifles and hand guns.

Legitimate personal confidence in one's own ability is the key to victory. A fully loaded pistol is useless to the man who has an empty magazine between his ears. Speed is five-sixths smoothness. Maxims, life lessons. Transferable skills, logics.

How to strip and clean the weapons of choice. To be able to clear a blocked chamber, replace a firing pin, to strip down and rebuild the gun fast and in difficult conditions; blindfold, freezing cold, under water, one handed, wearing gloves. Acquiring a range of varied and covert skills Mycroft would not even realise existed.

Some of them ridiculous skills to teach a child.

Eventually it was Bradshaw who broke the news to Mycroft, the next time he was home for the holidays. Mycroft had been tight lipped and disapproving, feeling his baby brother to be too young, too headstrong, too self absorbed for the art and science of shooting. So Bradshaw had been economical with the truth of some of the skills he was teaching the baby brother; partly because he knew Mycroft might not approve, but partly because the boy was proving such an apt pupil.

For Mycroft was wrong. Bradshaw had been just as doubtful at the start, but to hear the older boy catalogue his fears - fears that Sherlock had never demonstrated any possibility of disappointing him with - somehow showed him that the younger boy had been right in his determination: learning to shoot was simply good for Sherlock, helped him to focus, to relate to something outside himself, to exercise self discipline. To give him the confidence when out in a big bad world that would never do him any favours, to help him survive.

And watching the brothers together, either on a rough shoot or on the formal ranges at nearby Bisley, Bradshaw saw why. For although Mycroft had ability instilled by expectation, social etiquette, family habit, his own innate determination to be thorough and succeed at whatever he attempted, it was Sherlock who had the natural feral ability.

An ability to combine science with art, total concentration, perfect stillness, maturity in decision making. The ability to take responsibility for his own actions at a very young age and be individual in his approach, the true personal freedom that comes only through total discipline. Shotgun, rifle, pistol, game shooting - it was all and always the same.

Stillness, quietness, speed, instinct. An ability to remain unaffected by human outside influence, to read light and wind speed as factors influencing accuracy, to be able to compensate, to make and take the shot at the optimum time. He would make the perfect sniper, Bradshaw thought, and was chilled by that thought. About a child.

Sherlock had no inkling of this. To the boy, simply learning to shoot focussed his mind wonderfully. Pushed him towards singular maturity and detached decision making. Speed is fine, but accuracy is final.

And when he moved on to public school, his shooting skills were superior to any of the other boys, and his ascendancy in the gun clubs helped to create the mystique that would develop and grow and surround him, become so vital a part of his life, insulate him from normality and keep the other boys wary and distant rather than bullying and abusive.

He still got the bullying and the abuse, of course he did; he was Sherlock after all. But he finally learnt how to cope and handle that, and being able to shoot, with the confidence his superior skills in this field gave him, made the behaviour of idiots he could not avoid become somehow more endurable.

He had also been lucky that the family home was in Surrey, the same county as the national shooting centre at Bisley.

If a place could have a soul, it was Bisley. Not the village, the prison nor the furniture factory, but the three thousand acres that looked and felt like a cosy old fashioned village within a village, a Victorian time warp. And Sherlock had loved the place, growing up. It was his home from home, his nursery and university of life, his safety valve.

Bisley was legendary, the world heart and centre for shooting skills and their development, for competition. The old fashioned buildings and shops, the enduring style and good taste of the place, the huge variety of private and military marksmen he encountered, and the enthusiasms and the skills he found there, laid deep foundations for the man he would become.

He only took the National Schoolboys Championship the once - the family code of example to others and high morals meant that to have repeated the feat would have been seen to be both arrogant and impolite - and as the insignia on the trophy and the record books said merely 'W. Holmes,' no-one ever connected the precocious boy shooter with the world's only consulting detective as time went on. And he preferred it that way.

For as he got older and was swallowed up by his academic education, with science and chemistry and study, with horse riding and music, and the strange demands of his own psyche and mindset and the training of them, shooting had to settle into a new place in the order of things. Still part of him, still important, not lesser, not at all - but there were other more pressing things to do and learn and deal with now.

And as time went on he learnt it was politic to play down his ability with guns in general, and small arms in particular.

He learnt that the image of mad scientist, social leper, high functioning sociopath and dilettante detective served his purpose much better than demonstrating what he could really do. That it was better to present himself as a mystery and a closed book, to be seen as the freak, the weirdo, the strange tip of an even stranger iceberg. The genius to beware approaching too closely.

That gave him privacy, space, an unapproachable and unknowable separation from the rest of the world, from other people. People avoided him, and certainly avoided getting close to him. And he preferred life that way. That was his choice.

The Victorian era saw the emergence of the amateur gentleman detective. As a child Sherlock had promoted himself from stories of highwaymen and pirates to famous detectives such as the blind Max Carrados, Chinese philosopher peasant Kai Lung, The nameless Old Man In The Corner, who solved mysteries without ever visiting the scene of the crime while tying and untying knots in a length of string, the Thinking Machine Professor Van Dusen…..

Sherlock knew he could do all that too. And with the help of New Scotland Yard in the form of Detective Inspector Greg Lestrade, he finally began to carve himself a unique career and reputation.

Things changed when he moved to 221B Baker Street. A home base, consulting room, a website and blog, a new life with a new flatmate - Dr John Hamish Watson. The high profile case of serial murderer Jeff Hope, which changed everything And the work began in earnest.

It had started with finding 221B - a new home. He had loved Mrs Hudson, with as much emotion he had been able to find within himself, for years; so her newly vacant first floor flat seemed a natural refuge.

Placing his things in the flat was an act of precision, despite the appearance of chaos. Moving into a home where electricity had been installed long after the house was built meant there were many floorboards that had been cut to take electrical channelling. He found them all with glee - because all the voids beneath could become hiding places for all sorts of illegal or useful items.

Not just the drugs that had dominated his life for so long. There was a void under the bay window that was perfect for a sawn off shotgun, because you never knew when you might need one, and this elderly efficient specimen had been quietly purloined from a crime scene in Walworth. Various Asian fighting blades - beautiful, esoteric and illegal in England - were in a space beside the bathroom door, and an old but beautiful Browning L9A1 took pride of place in a bedroom cache under the window So he could clean and tend it in natural light without being disturbed, so it was privately close at hand if needed..

He did not remember how he had acquired the Browning - probably from a man in a pub, which meant he was probably off his head on something when he acquired it - but he loved the thing, because he had learnt to use one just like it when he was young and clever and less damaged than he was now. And it reminded him of a rare and special learning time from his past.

The Browning had a locked breech, recoil operated semi automatic, 9mm with a six groove right twisted barrel. With a manual thumb safety - which Sherlock had removed along with the firing pin block to be able to carry the Browning cocked and locked for speed and accuracy rather than strict safety - the pistol had a staggered thirteen round chamber.

There were various versions of the dependable Browning over many long years, but Sherlock's bore the legend 'Pistol Automatic L9A1' on the left hand side of the stock, which marked it as the military version of the classic Browning Hi-Power made between 1962 and the late 1980's; it did not bother him that the Browning had been replaced in the British Army with the Glock in 2013, because it was still in use by dozens of police and armed forces throughout the world. What disturbed if reassured him more was that both Gaddafi and Saddam Hussein had carried gold plated versions.

OK, so the trigger was heavy, and the action could often nip the webbing between thumb and first finger, but the accuracy and reliability of the Browning gave great confidence. So Sherlock kept it tended and cleaned and well oiled, and it would snap into his hand like a caress, an extension of his arm.

Then John Watson came into his life. A doctor, and a soldier, and a man with a gun. Sherlock had not suspected the man even had a handgun and was prepared to use it until the shell from a Sig Sauer whistled past his ear and stopped dead taxi driver Jeff Hope's attempt to kill Sherlock.

Sherlock had divined a great deal about the doctor in the thirty hours since they had met, but he had not divined this; that the mild and ordinary looking former army doctor had untold reserves of skill and courage he did not hesitate to use.

'Carried by the elite professional. Carried by all who demand the best' Sig boasted about their gun. Sherlock would not argue with that. For he also recalled the maxim to beware the man who only owns one gun; because he probably knew how to use it. And John Watson knew how to use the Sig.

He also knew and had demonstrated that he would kill someone to save Sherlock's life. And now so did Sherlock. No-one had ever done that for him before, and it had shaken him to his core.

They were not yet even officially flat mates at that point. But in that single action the two men were committed to each other for ever, and Sherlock took the full measure of the man who would kill for him without fuss or mercy. He had found not only a friend, but something more rare - a man he could trust with his life. Which to Sherlock was an attribute rarer and more valuable than gold.

After the event they had taken refuge in a Chinese restaurant. The headlong events of the day meant neither had eaten for hours, and coming down from the adrenalin high of the evening, Sherlock calmly observed and sipped water, while Watson had taken several lagers with his dim sum and had relaxed out of his normal reserve, trusted Sherlock enough already to speak freely.

"I didn't shoot the man to blackmail you into sharing the flat with me, y'know," Watson confided, half joking.

"I am aware," murmured Sherlock in reply.

"But I owe you, mate…" Watson continued, causing Sherlock to frown and try to follow John Watson's logic. "See, you had already cured my limp. So it was sort of my turn." Watson buried his face in his lager, looked up at Sherlock, grinned the slightly lopsided grin of the slightly intoxicated, and said: "Mega!"

Sherlock laughed. Angelo returning Watson's walking stick only after the two had hared around London on a wild goose chase - running and jumping and making no allowances for a limp whatsoever - had more than proved the limp to be psychosomatic. A proof Watson had needed, and which had been all about triggering his recovery from trauma by restoring self confidence and awareness of abilities not lost forever because of injury and trauma, but merely resting until being called back to life.

"Don't worry about repercussions against you because of the shooting," Sherlock said quietly. "My brother will sort things out."

Watson thought about that, then smiled again.

"You're mad, you two," he commented. Thought a bit more. "But I suppose you both know that?"

"Yes," said Sherlock, grinning now himself. "It has been noted."

He sobered, looked John Watson in the eye.

"Thank you, John. Words are not adequate….."

Watson shrugged.

"Nothing more than I've been taught to do. Training cut in. I know how to shoot. So I shot."

"But you're a doctor….."

"And a soldier. Soldier first, when needed. As you saw."

"How do you feel?"

"About being a soldier again? Pretty damn good. About killing a man? Well, it was a case of you or him. So no contest. But if you're asking - I'll sleep fine tonight."

The two men's eyes met. Met and held for long seconds that seemed like a lifetime.

"Good." The word came out strangely. It said so much more than one syllable. But it was all Sherlock could manage.

"Flatmates," said John Watson with a smile and a self deprecating shake of the head. "It sounds so simple. But means a lot. To me, anyway. Do you know what I'm saying?"

"Yes." Sherlock Holmes looked away with a terse nod. He did not want to look into the soul that was looking at him with such renewed self respect and naked honesty.

"I need this chance, Sherlock. A grab at returning to what normality should be. You said…you said you needed an assistant. Well, I think I can do that. I think I can help you, if you will let me. Take notes. Hold your coat, mind your back. Be your bodyguard and carry your gun. I might have already done the interview? D'you think?"

Sherlock smiled with a gentleness unusual for him. It would be best if John Watson believed he was the marksman of the new team. He certainly was the professional. Sherlock had learnt to shoot as a hobby, as a gentleman and an amateur, with a gentleman's reserve and perspicacity. Watson had learnt to shoot as a trade and a craft, as a soldier and killer. No contest, really.

For John Watson needed that sense of superiority, the responsibility, that new, morale raising strength of position and purpose. He needed it to make himself whole again. And Sherlock understood that. Would encourage and allow that. Would peaceably allow Watson his assumption of superiority in this thing.

And for years he avoided making his skills known to John Watson; or to anyone else unless the work called for it Which was what it was all about, really.

So when he prowled the streets at night time, thinking, relaxing, meeting his homeless network contacts, he often ended up at his gentleman's club in Piccadilly; the same club to which generations of his family had belonged. There was still a ten year waiting list to join: Sherlock had no time for the normal social niceties of the place, and neither had Mycroft, who preferred the quietness and silent networking of the Diogenes Club.

But at night time in the almost deserted bowels of a famous club that will remain nameless - but was established more than 200 years ago for the use of diplomats, merchants, adventurers, military men and explorers - Sherlock could relax and be himself. He used the firing ranges, swam thirty fast lengths a session in the Romano styled pool, booked fencing time with sabre or epee, boxed with the instructors and danced the dojo in the style of various obscure martial arts that fascinated him for their precision, spirituality and effectiveness.

Neither Watson nor Mycroft knew of Sherlock's nocturnal habits; nor why some days the comatose position on the sofa was more about relaxation and recuperation rather than brain work. Which was Sherlock's most secret self, and a vital part of the engine and the survival of a secretive man.

So when he took the Browning to the pool to face Moriarty, John Watson should not have been there. Without artifice or subterfuge, Sherlock was alone and braced to kill. He had not killed then, but always felt his nerveless handling of the Browning may well have saved both their lives in the game of Russian roulette they had played against Jim Moriarty that day.

And Watson had been so distressed by the situation at the pool, and his role in it, kidnapped, dressed in a bomb, risking self sacrifice and defeat, he had never asked about the pistol Sherlock held that was not his own. Had never queried how Sherlock had so coolly faced down the shooter in the museum, or so expertly handled the American agent's gun, either at Irene Adler's house or within Baker Street.

John Watson blindly accepted his abilities because he was Sherlock Holmes. And that was what Sherlock Holmes did. Watson had understood that simple and incontrovertible truth for a long time by then.

Only at Appledore had John Watson seen Sherlock Holmes's very real ability with a gun. And even then he had not used any of the skills he had spent so many years honing.

He had pickpocketed the Sig from Watson's coat, blindsided both Watson and Magnussen, made his decision, And shooting someone in the face at point blank range…..that had not impressed Watson, but appalled him. Even though both had known it was necessary. That someone had to do it, make the life or death decision to do it. But it could not, should not, be John Watson. He was too close to the decision and the heart of the reason for it, To save Mary Watson - and countless others in line behind her. That was the moral and tactical decision of Sherlock Holmes alone.

Sherlock had thrown Watson's gun away from him while Magnusson was still falling. He had no sense of elation, or victory, or success. Just acceptance of the job done. He dropped to his knees and raised his hands. Having executed justice, he was now prostrating himself, submitting himself to the same process.

One of the maxims he had been taught so many years before came back to him then, and he could smell the grass and the cordite, feel the sunshine on his young face, hear George Bradshaw's words:

"It's not always being fast or being accurate that counts, it's being willing. Most men aren't willing. They blink an eye or take a breath before they pull the trigger. I won't." Then George had laughed. "John Wayne said that in some cowboy film or other, and I've never forgotten it. Doesn't make it less true."

Sherlock bowed his head in submission to fate and hatred and his training. Nothing made it less true. Nothing at all. And he would do it again. If he needed to. If he ever had the chance.

END

 **Author's notes:**

The ability to hold a bag of sugar on an outstretched arm has for many years been the acid test as to whether a young person has yet developed the muscular and skeletal strength to hold and manage a gun.

We know Sherlock comes from a country estate background and was educated at public school, so it is highly likely he learnt to shoot at a very young age; virtually all UK public schools have gun clubs, and if you subscribe to the theory that Sherlock (as well as Benedict Cumberbatch) went to Harrow, this is a school which has several forms of shooting offered to pupils.

In _A Scandal In Belgravia_ Sherlock handles guns with ease, and is seen to be ambidextrous when doing so. (Yes, I know this is to facilitate blocking for one particular scene, but even so….). Watson is left handed but also shoots right handed; this is not unusual and is related to brain/eye coordination dominance.

We also know Sherlock brings a pistol, which Moriarty identifies as a Browning L9A1, to the pool at the end of _The Great Game_ even though Watson uses a Sig Sauer in _A Study In Pink._

It is too easy to dismiss this as a continuity error and assume Holmes has brought Watson's gun, that Props have given him the wrong gun. It is, however, far more credible that both Holmes and Watson have and use their own individual weapons.

There is a charming synchronicity to this, as the Sig is an updated version of the Browning, although produced by a different manufacturer.

Watson is fresh from military service at the start of _A Study In Pink,_ (it is an unofficial norm that individuals leave military service with mementoes of their trade, usually their guns), and as Sherlock would have learnt to shoot as a child, it is totally canon compliant, as well as perfectly possible as if in real life, that Sherlock should own and carry the older style weapon, which is still in service in dozens of police and military organisations around the world.

So it is an interesting aspect of character study and relativity that as far as the use of small arms is concerned, Sherlock defers to Watson. This piece attempts to explain this. And also how it is that Sherlock never appears to exercise, yet is always fit in all meanings of the word!

END


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